FIG. 1 shows a conventional clamshell container. FIG. 2 shows a stack of conventional clamshell containers. When separating a stack of clamshell containers, one common practice is to manually insert the containers into a box. Sometimes, the containers are inserted during the erection of the box, and sometimes, they are inserted by a packer in the field.
Conventional denesting machines utilize some form of distance setting or distance adjustment to pick or denest the desired number of containers. When relying on distance setting, the containers need to be nested the same way for each incoming new stack. Since each container vendor may nest their containers differently, using the same distance setting for each stack of containers may cause a change in the number of containers placed on the conveyer belt. On the other hand, changing or adjusting the distance setting for each vendor requires the machine to be shut down and recalibrated each time a stack of different containers is denested, resulting in undesired downtime and inefficient use of the machine.